ANTICHRIST (Denmark/Fr/Ger/Swe/It/Pol 2009) **
Directed by Lars Von Trier

ANTICHRIST is the Lars Von Trier’s horror feature that unexpectedly got the most laughs at the Cannes Film Festival when the words ‘dedicated to Andrei Tarkovsky’ was splashed on the screen at its conclusion. 

Though the film shares a few characteristics with the great, late Russian director’s films, ANTICHRIST is foremost ponderously paced and filled with both eerie landscapes and symbols that might mean more or less depending on ones interpretation. 

Von Trier’s film, divided into four chapters – the first three called grief, pain and despair with the final one called the three beggars.  Grief, pain and despair converge on the main characters.

All this is related to the story of a young couple (Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) having sex while their son falls out the window.  The husband, a therapist intends to treat her depression himself by retreating to a cabin in the woods.  Of course, things never work out as planned.

This is Von Trier’s vision of hell as if nature turned bad.  But the nature Von Trier is observing is the inner nature of human beings that can turn against mankind as it does in this film.  Blood, screaming, torture (physical but mostly mental) and other unbearable sexual and graphic acts fill this movie.  ANTICHRIST the film is appropriately named for the director’s depiction of hell on film.  A horror movie in the true sense of the word!